Posted by on June, 18 2019 7:29 pm
The feeling of being passed from one call center agent to the next is one that has led many consumers to dread calling a contact center in the first place. Feeling like it takes forever to reach someone or that your time isn’t valued can make it an altogether unpleasant experience. What’s more, it doesn’t give a caller much confidence in the qualifications of a facility when you have to repeat the same information to every person you are repeatedly transferred to.
These are several of the most important reasons that so many centers today heavily rely on warm transfers. Read on to learn more about what this technique entails - and how to warm up your own transfer techniques.
When your callers make contact with your facility, they have a lot of information to relay to you. When you have to transfer them to another agent or staff member, this information may have to be repeated. This can be frustrating and discouraging for your consumer.
A warm transfer prevents this from happening. When you use a warm transfer, you speak to the agent or party you will be patching your caller through to prior to making the connection, to prepare them for the conversation with relevant information. It helps to make the resulting conversation smoother, more productive, and more comfortable for everyone involved.
So, what is a warm transfer in a call center? Simply put, it is the best way to transfer important information from person to person so that they can best serve your consumers in your contact center!
As you might imagine, there are numerous advantages to patching calls through on a more personal, more interactive basis in your contact center. Not only are your agents more informed, but your consumers feel more valued. While some management members may fear that adding the few seconds of time it can take to provide a warm transfer in a call center could slow business down too much, these precious seconds can actually add the kind of personal touch to your customer service that makes the difference in creating a great experience and satisfying customers - or not.
One of the biggest benefits of a warm transfer is that it allows you to provide better customer service and create superior customer experiences for your callers. By offering the information needed by the next party prior to the conversation, you take that burden off the caller, which makes for a more relaxed and pleasant conversation. There are many modern callers who would thank you for that alone!
Likewise, the potential for more personal, pleasant greetings exists with warm transfers. Imagine speaking to someone you’ve just been transferred to who already knows your name, your account information, and why you’re calling. That feeling of excellent service is one that contact centers are always searching for ways to provide - and one that a warm transfer guarantees.
It’s a common misconception that using a warm transfer will take up too much time for your call center to truly be productive. However, those who utilize this technique in their centers often see that the opposite is true.
How? Because in many cases, callers don’t have time to repeat their concerns, questions, or personal information over and over again. Likewise, the clients that reach out to your facility may not have time to relay their contact info repeatedly. By using warm transfers - and giving them the opportunity to relay this information a single time and have it passed on as needed - you speed up the process for them and simplify it for your agents.
With so many calls coming in every day, it can be easy to misinterpret or forget important information. Who was that client you were speaking with? What company did they say they were with? Which product were they calling about? Those kinds of details are important in getting to the heart of customer service matters - and exactly the type of information that it can be easy to overlook or lose in the course of a conversation.
With a warm transfer, you can look forward to that information being presented to you at the beginning of your conversation with the contact. This way, you come into the exchange with the relevant information fresh in your mind and ready to provide excellent customer service - and knowing exactly who you’re talking to and about what!
Have you ever received a phone call that you really didn’t want to take? If you’re working in a call center, this isn’t as likely. After all, contact centers make they're living by taking and making calls. However, there are some calls that may be redundant, unnecessary, or which may take up time that could be better used serving other consumers or clients.
When you use a warm transfer, you give your agents and staff members the option to skip calls that might not be as important as others - or to take a message and call those contacts back at a later time. This flexibility ensures that no one goes overlooked, and everyone’s concerns are addressed by order of importance and relevance.
When your ready to see all the potential of a warm transfer in a call center for yourself, talk to the industry experts at ChaseData. We have the tools to help you prepare your own contact center to transfer calls effectively and without the hassle that customers dread, so you can provide a better experience every time. Give us a call to see what we can do to help you get started today!